172 A Timely Loss Part 1 (2/2)

All of the matches in March had already ended, and due to Nottingham Forest maintaining their winning streak in the league, Tony Twain had been chosen as the best League One manager of the month, and Eastwood was chosen as the best player.

This was not a good sign; when Tang En was receiving the award—a bottle of champagne—he could not even squeeze out a smile. The huge amount of pressure on his heart was turning into dense, dark clouds, discreetly exerting their force on his heart.

Giving Tang En an award at that time was not an encouragement, but a curse: You may have been the best manager of the previous month, it said, but you will definitely lose your next match!

It turned out as expected. On April 3, during the 40th round of league matches, Nottingham Forest lost to Sheffield United. Tang En also had not wanted to lose the match, but all of the players on the team performed poorly. Tang En was in the technical area, powerless to do anything but simply accept the loss. The only thing that gave him relief was that his loss was not too miserable, a small loss of 0:1. The team had not displayed signs of completely breaking down.

During the press conference, Tang En attributed the loss entirely to himself, and was very low-key in front of the victor, Warnock. He commended Sheffield United's strength, and admitted the mistakes that he had made in his tactics, even though everyone could tell that they were not very serious mistakes. Tang En simply refused to mention the players' terrible performance. He was carefully protecting the players, even more than a mother hen watching over her eggs.

Still, the players were worried that Tang En, after returning from the press conference, would give them a tongue-lashing in the changing room. They themselves knew that everyone had performed poorly in the match.

Their no-loss streak, maintained ever since Tony Twain had taken over Nottingham Forest, ended just like that. Anyone else in Tang En's shoes would feel upset as well.

Tang En was, naturally, displeased, and seeing the smile on Warnock's face made him even more furious. He had lost to this old man time and again, and to the prideful Tang En, that was quite a humiliation. But what could he have done? He had used up all three of his substitutions, had used every trick that he had up his sleeve, and still had lost. The match had already ended; the whistle signalling the end of the match had been blown a long time ago, and even its echo had faded. So what good would getting angry do?

After Tang had En darkened his face and endured the old man's arrogant, non-stop boasting for a full five minutes, the press conference finally ended.

Tang En and Warnock merely touched each others' fingers and treated it as a handshake. Afterwards, Tang En paid no heed to the reporters around him as he turned around and left the press conference, walking towards the changing room.

Deep down inside, Tang En knew very clearly what kind of situation the team was in. In reality, even though they lost the match, things was not nearly as bad as he had originally thought. This was based on the findings that Walker found out about after contacting Bruce, who had told Walker the results from the latest round of matches.

Nottingham Forest, who had just lost a match, fell to ninth place with a total of sixty-two points, but they were only three points away from the team in fourth place. The teams in front of Nottingham Forest were neck-to-neck. In summary, Tony Twain's team had lost at the best possible time.

Once he had thought about that, Tang En's mood improved quite a bit. After pondering it again, he became even happier.

Hadn't he always been worried that the pressure on the team would be too great after all their consecutive wins, and that it could give them a nervous breakdown? Now that they had lost, that worry was no longer relevant.

Pushing open the changing room door, Tang En discovered that it was complete silence in there, which he was not used to. He thought for a moment that he had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had walked into the wrong room.

So he walked out, closed the door, and saw the ”AWAY” sign on the door. Only then did he finally confirm that he had not entered the wrong room by mistake.

Opening the door once again, he saw his players, all dumbfounded by his actions. Seeing this, Tang En suddenly could not hold it in and burst out laughing. ”I thought I went into the wrong room.” He pointed towards the door and continued, ”So I closed the door to see what was written on it. You guys were so quiet that I got confused. What's wrong with all of you?”

”We lost, Boss.” The players thought that Twain was asking the obvious, and that this was definitely the prelude to the ensuing storm. So they were rushing to admit their mistakes.

Seeing this scene, Tang En shrugged his shoulders. ”Does anyone want to know why I thought I walked into the wrong room just now? Because I was thinking about a problem. Anyone interested in what I was thinking about?”

Nobody answered him, because nobody could see through the manager's plans. If one of them said something wrong, the first drip from the raging storm would land on his head. Nobody wanted to be that person.

Seeing that nobody was answering his question, Tang En felt slightly bored. He scratched his head and said, ”I was thinking… that we did well by losing. It was... a timely loss.”

After he had spoken, everyone in the room was shocked.